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Background, number one and only daughter has asked me to smoke turkeys and hams for her people at work. She is a 9-1-1 assistant supervisor and trainer of 9-1-1 operators for our sheriff's office.

They want turkey and maybe a ham or two.

My equipment is: one SS USD and three WSM Mini's.

Question - How many turkeys and hams to smoke?? I know size matters, so I like to use 10 to 12 lb turkeys when I cook. Also all adults, no kids, and good appetites. Don't know about the hams, have never smoked one, but how hard could it be (hehehe).

Of course there will be the usual sides that they other people will bring, I'm just doing the meat portion. Oh, did I mention it needs to be done for lunch time on X-Mass eve. So I would need a start time frame for a noonish lunch.

For 35 12oz portions you will need about 26 pounds of cooked meat. General rule for whole turkey is 1 pound per serving. Ham is already cooked so you will not have much shrink from reheating it. Turkey has about a 40&#37; yield after cooking. If you are going half and half, 13 pounds of cooked turkey would be about 32 pounds of raw turkey.

I've yet to have a dry anything in my SS UDS, but I may have to try a brine sometime.

Tried an injection on a butt and really didn't see a difference, kinda like a tin ear.

Paul B
SS UDS

While the injection for a pork butt is similar to a brine, it is used more for flavor purposes. It won't necessarily add moisture because the pork has a lot of internal fat and connective tissue that eventually converts to collagen keeping the meat very moist. An injection for the purpose of adding moisture might not be noticed at all, unless it sits overnight it doesn't have time to break down the proteins and equalize into the individual cells. Brining over time unravels protein strands which make the meat tender while also allowing it to retain added moisture during the cook.

Not saying it is a normal turkey is dry but the brined turkey is much more moist and has much more flavorful even if you only brine for half the suggested time.

Do a test run, brine half the chicken you are going to cook for a meal. Cook the normal chicken and the brined side by side and taste the difference at the table.

I was reluctant to brine the first time, but now I brine all the time.

If it helps, I did a 12 pound turkey and a 12 pound spiral cut ham on thanksgiving on the UDS. At 350 the turkey took 2:45 to get to 160 in the breast, and I only opened it once at 90 minutes to baste with butter and put the ham on. Ham took about 2 hours to come up to 140. Hopefully that helps with your timing.